


Mahal's Gifts

by TetrodotoxinB



Series: Bad Things Bingo 2018 [5]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Fever, Gratuitous world-building, Hugging, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Political Bullshit, See I made it better in the second chapter, Sickness, Square filled: Water Torture, Thranduil is a prick, Waterboarding, Whump, all the emotions, lots of feels, stress positions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-05-27 16:12:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15028334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: When Thranduil finds Thorin to be unwilling to meet his demands, he sets his sights on the heir apparent. Unfortunately for Fili and Kili, Thranduil is not above a little physical coercion. As it turns out, this is not without consequence.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Created for Bad Things Happen Bingo. Squares filled: Water torture (Chapter 1) and Fever (Chapter 2).
> 
> Thanks to slack friends, mostly Amy and Courtney, for their help picking this into something reasonable. Any remaining errors are mine (and I don't share). 
> 
> Please heed the tags. This contains depictions of torture and illness.

Thorin had been gone for what felt like weeks. Dwalin and Balin both agreed that he was being held in isolation deep below, but some of the others had begun to grumble that it was more than that. With Thorin out of the way the throne would fall to Fili — a dwarf lacking in years, experience, and influence. It had come to mind before, without any input from the others, but after a time and against all reason, the fear of Thorin’s death grew in Fili’s mind. 

Thranduil was placing the responsibility of the well-being of the Company on Fili and hoping that he might not yet be strong enough bear it. The first trial had been rough handling and missed meals when Fili didn’t play the political game just so. Thranduil clearly enjoyed the strategy of statecraft and diplomacy, even though he used neither to any apparent end. Fili’s inevitable failures always earned him punishments.

Until the day they didn’t. 

As negotiations continued and Fili held his ground, unwilling and unable to sign away the wealth and power of Erebor to an elf, the punishments fell no longer to him, but to the others. Dwalin had disappeared first, but then there were Nori and Bofur and Gloin. They would be gone for a few hours only to come back barely able to walk from the beatings they had received. 

It was hard enough, even with the Company supporting Fili’s on-going refusal, to see what his actions brought against them all. Fili — no matter what Balin said — felt at least some degree of personal responsibility. It was bearable, but only just. 

And now the guard came asking after the youngest. 

Ori was the youngest and no secret was made of that amongst the Company, but Kili had lied and taken Ori’s place. Fili would kill him for it if Thranduil didn’t do it first. Of course Fili had planned on lying, too, not that it would have done any good. No one would have believed him if he’d claimed to be youngest. While Fili wasn’t past his first century and Ori was clearly green as grass, Kili didn’t even have his beard yet. It was the only lie that would work, even with this dense lot of tree-fuckers.

Fili understood why Kili had spoken up — as princes it was their duty to protect the Company, no matter the cost — but Fili was still angry. 

“It is said that dwarrow cannot swim,” Thranduil commented blithely. “That your bones are like stone and you sink straight to the bottom. Is that true?”

Fili straightened. “It’s a common misconception.”

“Hmm. Well, be that as it may, you are certainly familiar with the concept of drowning, yes?”

“We are,” Fili answered. His shoulders were beginning to ache from the stress of the pole that ran between his arms and back, holding his arms at unnatural angles behind him even as his hands were tied to his waist. He was careful not to shift even though the stone floor made his knees throb from the hour he had already been kneeling. Any display of weakness only brought swifter and more agonizing torments. It was a hard learned lesson and one he was not eager to repeat.

“Well, that is good news, I suppose,” commented Thranduil mildly.

It was bait, designed to lure Fili in to speaking, into conversing beyond simple answers. “Do not speak unless you are asked a direct question which you must answer,” Balin had advised him. It was advice to which Fili strictly adhered.

“Are you not curious why I asked after the youngest of your party? After your brother?” Thranduil asked after the silence between them had drawn long.

“No,” Fili answered simply.

“Pity. Things like this go better when you’re invested, though your investment might soon grow.” Turning to the guards by the door Thranduil snapped his fingers.

Fili watched the opposite wall with a growing dread. He didn’t turn his gaze towards what was happening, but then it didn’t take genius to know that it involved Kili. And water.

The men of the north, the ones they traded with from the rivers around Ered Luin, made what they called “dunking benches” for weeding out the witches in their midst. Thorin had always said the men were small minded and needlessly superstitious for it.

But be that as it may, the fear that the practice was known in the depths of Mirkwood began to grow in Fili. The appearance of a water basin, several buckets of water, and an inclined bench — all placed directly in front of him — did nothing to assuage this fear. 

Behind him the door opened. The elves were characteristically silent in their movement, leaving only one person’s footsteps audible. Fili fought the urge to turn, to see his brother, knowing that it wouldn’t be long until he was brought into view anyway.

“Fili?” 

His resolve to remain unaffected evaporated in that one word and before he could think, Fili turned abruptly towards the voice. “Kili?”

The motion stretched one shoulder painfully and his knees slipped against the stone causing him to wobble. The ache had only just begun to diminish into numbness and the movement jarred everything back to life, stabbing sensations running the length of both calves and into his feet and toes. 

Kili was manacled and forced to take small shuffling steps. His wrists were shackled and attached to a chain that ran around his waist. He had also been stripped to just his pants — his chest, stomach, and even his feet were bare. Fili looked him over for any signs of abuse, but only the half-faded bruises from a scuffle several days prior and the scars from the spider bites lingered. 

For a lack of knowing what else to do Fili watched as Kili was forced onto the bench and strapped down with thick leather belts. It was no dunking bench, the plane of it fixed in place, and the large tub under the head of the bench was empty. 

Kili, for his part, remained stoically silent, though he was hardly compliant. As young dwarrow, Balin and Dwalin had schooled the princes in the harsh realities of their position. Part of that had been to train them for capture, interrogation, and torture, but they had been barely into their forties then, and both brothers had been naive enough to hope never to put it to good use. Now, though, such childhood hopes and unworldliness were long since past, and while the naivete no longer remained, their hopeful forgetfulness of past lessons was an immediate problem. So, after Kili had offered himself up in Ori’s place, Dwalin had quietly, mostly in Iglishmek, reminded Kili of what he and Fili had learned all those years ago. Clearly he had taken it to heart given his uncharacteristically quiet demeanor. 

“I assume that you’ll be more amenable to our requests after this experience. Do hold your commentary until the end,” Thranduil instructed. He nodded to the guards, one of whom gathered a towel from behind the bench. 

“Fili, don’t give him anyth-” Kili’s voice was muffled, nearly cut off, by the towel being pulled tight over his face. 

The other guard took up a bucket of water and began to pour a slow, steady stream of water onto the towel over Kili’s mouth. Fili knew better than to judge a torture by the first few seconds so he waited in panicked stillness for the other hammer to fall. 

It didn’t take long. By the count of fifteen Kili was shaking, his entire body taut like the bowstrings he carried. The force of his struggling shook the bench and another guard came over from his post by the door to hold the bench in place. 

Desperation and rage washed over Fili and he struggled against his bonds. The chains held fast and Fili only succeeded in wrenching both shoulders further out of place. But he held his tongue, knowing that nothing he could say would do anything to alleviate his brother’s suffering, and given Thranduil’s instructions, anything he could do would likely make it worse.

“Emotions will break you both, lad. I’m not saying you won’t feel for him, but you can’t show it. As prince you have a role to play and the crying brother isn’t it. All you can do is be his witness,” Balin had explained to Fili during Dwalin’s lecture to Kili.

But being the witness of his brother’s torture — whether through tears or not — did not come easily. Shortly after they started, there was a pause. The water stopped and the rag was lifted away. Kili coughed up mouthfuls of water and took several heaving breaths, his eyes wide and searching. 

“ _Nadad!_ ” Kili begged and instinctively Fili leaned towards him to offer comfort as he had done his whole life, but this time he stopped short of pulling the restraints taut. 

There was nothing he could do by pulling except injure himself. Nothing he could do but worsen Kili’s fate by calling out when he was forbidden to do so.

Kili’s gasping breaths were cut short by the reapplication of the towel and the slow pouring of more water. As Kili thrashed, his fists balled up tight on his stomach, the chains clinking, and every sinew drew tight as he fought for escape and survival. Fili watched and began to understand what Balin had meant when he had said that pain would be the least of it.

The torment of kneeling and the way his arms were twisted made Fili’s body burn, white-hot bolts of agony shooting through shoulders and back, chest and neck, and then down his legs and his into feet. But even pain that stole his breath and made his stomach roll was preferable to the fear and the helplessness. The pain was something almost tangible, something he could make sense of in a way. But the fear of not being able to control his body, of not being able to save Kili, the helplessness of knowing that whatever came next was only for him to endure or witness — it was a devastation unlike anything else he had ever known. 

From where Fili knelt he was no more than six paces from Kili. Close enough that in any other circumstances he wouldn’t have to move far to touch, to comfort, or to save. But there, in the dungeon where the rock stank of plants and elves, he was only close enough to witness.

Anger and helplessness warred in Fili as he watched round after round of poured water. Balin had told him that it would consume him, that they would take him apart until the pieces of him littered the floor like pebbles in the mines, but at the time Fili couldn’t see how when he wasn’t the one being tortured. 

He understood now, though. Understood that there was no stopping the anguished clench of his heart, understood that the pain, as horrible as it was, was never the goal — all of it was only ever about breaking him down. Balin had tried to explain how to survive, and at the time it hadn’t made sense. But Fili saw now that survival was based only on how long he endured, not how well he endured. He only had to have the stones to say “no” until they stopped asking.

For the most part this water torture was quiet. There was no chance for Kili to scream except when he was trying to cough or vomit up water during the brief breaks the guards afforded him. But screaming would have been preferable to the hiccupping, sobbing, and begging he did. Kili had been caned probably more than his fair share of times as dwarfling as he was always up to something. Never once had Fili heard him ask for leniency or beg for mercy. To hear it then, leagues and years from their childhood home made Fili grateful that he had been denied a morning meal if only so that he had nothing to vomit up. 

Only once the third bucket was empty did Thranduil hold up a hand to pause the guards. The towel was discarded to the floor with a heavy _plop_ and Kili coughed and spit and retched and gasped in relief. While Thranduil watched Kili’s attempts at recovery, the guards worked to carefully refill the buckets with the water from the tub that had been under Kili’s head, fresh dread settling over Fili. 

“So you see, Master Fili, this is a rather tedious task, and as you and your young brother are now aware, you have no real choices here. Either accede to my demands or we can continue this until you do.”

Fili took deep breaths and looked at Kili. His chest was still heaving, but his hands had long since gone slack, too tired to continue more than the most feeble attempts at escape. 

“ _Please, brother, please,_ ” Kili pleaded in Khuzdul. Fili swallowed, sick at what he had to say and unable to look at Kili while he did.

“I cannot give you what you ask. Only the king may sign such an agreement and the King Under the Mountain is Thorin,” Fili answered. 

A whimper drew Fili’s gaze back to his brother and he saw the panicked look on Kili’s face, the one that said he knew that Fili would not stop this no matter how bad it got. The helplessness and desolation on his brother’s face cut Fili like a hot knife, the guilt he felt as searing as if he had poured the water himself.

Thranduil scowled at Fili, pressed into a corner by Fili’s declaration. Either he could admit that Thorin was dead and he had committed regicide with the expectation of manipulating the heir. Or he had to admit that Thorin was alive, though likely not for much longer if Fili had acceded. But any answer given after Fili’s declaration would be nothing less than an admission of guilt on multiple counts. After a moment of silent contemplation Thranduil turned to this guards.

“Continue at will. I have other, less tedious tasks to attend to,” Thranduil instructed. Then, with an overly dramatic swish of his cloak, he strode out of the room, slamming the door hard behind him.

“ _Nadad,_ ” Kili called quietly.

“I’m here, _naddith,_ ” Fili answered. Kili’s face seemed to brighten for a moment, the strained panic slackening into tenuous relief, as though Fili’s presence alone was enough to soothe the hurts of his treatment. 

But the relief on Kili’s face barely lingered a moment before the small towel was thrown over his face again. Fili heard a strangled “No!” before the water began to pour and then there were only wet moans and the straining of his bonds in his labored attempts at escape. 

In his life there had been few times when Fili found he did not have the stomach for something. Corporal punishment of criminals had been the first. The execution of criminals had come after that. Those things had taken years to get accustomed to, and even then he never felt at ease. Some things were not meant to be borne freely. 

But even those events had never inspired him to look away. Not when he had first bloodied his sword on the bodies of men and orcs alike who had thought to attack their caravans. Not when he had given a merciful death to a guardsman after yet another attack on New Belegost. 

Suffering and death were the lot of Mahal’s children and they always had been. The only thing that Dwarrow had against it was the witness of each other’s suffering. There was no shame in pain, no shame in death or deformity or even crying. Witness was what they could give one another when all else could be taken, the promise that another’s suffering was heard by the community and they would not have to bear it alone.

But bearing witness for Kili was the single hardest thing Fili had ever done. It took every ounce of willpower not to close his eyes or look away, and his eyes watered with unspent tears. Under every breath Fili prayed to Mahal that Kili would survive the day.

By the time the elves stopped, not just to refill their buckets again, but well and truly stopped, Kili lay limply on the bench. His hands lay open on his stomach where they were chained and his muscles, save those which swelled with every breath, were slack from exhaustion. 

For several minutes after the last water was poured, Kili retched. When he wasn’t vomiting, water dripped out of his mouth and nose and ran across his face. 

The elves spoke amongst themselves, their quiet voices almost too loud after the near quiet of the previous hours. They were free with their words, unaware that either of the princes spoke Sindarin, but they said nothing of interest or value, merely complaining about their work and the clean-up that followed. But in the time between the end of the torture and when Kili was dragged out, all that Fili gathered and all that he would remember later, were the half-formed and whispered pleas that trickled out of Kili’s mouth like the water that seemed to be endless. 

When Kili and all of their horrible equipment had been carted away, Fili was left alone — still shackled to the floor of the room. When the guards retreated, they took their torches and their strange elven light with them, and Fili welcomed the darkness that enveloped him. 

The pain in his shoulders and knees had long since grown to a deep, cutting pain that would rob him of sleep, if he had been able of sleep in the first place still trussed up on his knees with his brother’s cries echoing in his ears. Even so, it was a relief not to see or be seen, not to go back to his cell just yet where he felt as though he were expected to remain composed. In the darkness, held deep below the surface of Arda, far from the sun, Fili let the stone hold him while he cried for his brother and for himself.

*****

The clang of the metal door echoed down through the dungeon long after the guards had disappeared back up the stairs. Fili slumped to the floor of his cell, too tired to crawl towards the meager pallet that passed for a bed.

“Fili, lad?” Balin called.

“I’m here,” Fili answered, his words an empty parody of his earlier reassurance to Kili. 

“You alright, lad?” 

“Fine. Did they bring Kili back yet?”

“Aye, they did. He’s not talking, though. Is he injured?” Balin asked gently.

Fili remembered as a dwarfling a couple of boys his age nearly drowning. Someone had pulled them out just in time, and though they’d coughed up a lot of water they seemed to be fine. One of them had died that night in his sleep and the other followed the next afternoon. “Dry drowning” his amad had called it. Fear grew in him and he wondered if Kili could dry drown from what was done to him.

“Fili?” Balin called again.

“If he lasts another night he should be fine,” Fili replied.

A hushed chorus of appeals to Mahal echoed through the dungeon, slowly coalescing into a single song. Some part of Fili wanted to join them, to cry out the despair and anguish in his heart in the witness of others, but it felt hopeless, pointless, empty. Mahal had not saved them before and he wasn’t about to start just because some ragtag band of dwarrow mumbled some worn old prayers in a dungeon. 

Anger, exhaustion, hunger, and pain combined in Fili to make his entire body ache so fiercely that he felt as if he too had been tortured. He felt helpless against the weakness in his body and curled in on himself while the prayers wound together, the words of their people weaving a song that called for mercy and restoration of body and soul for both brothers. 

Angry though he was, Fili was nearly asleep when Dwalin spoke, the melody of their prayer still reverberating down into the depths of the elven palace.

“Fili?” 

Fili opened his eyes but didn’t answer, too tired, angry, and empty to find the words.

“When you’re ready, we’re here to witness you, lad.”

The memory of his father’s funeral came back suddenly. It had been years since he could recall more than the barest of details, but now he could smell the incense, see the warm glow of the braided candles, hear the echo of sung prayers that deepened as it touched the stone, feel Thorin’s strong arms holding him while Kili, just a babe, was cradled in their amad’s arms. He remembered crying and clinging to Thorin while Vili was committed to the mountain — “Mahal has hewn us from the stone and unto the stone we shall return.” 

It was later at home when Balin and Dwalin came by. Fili still clung to Thorin while they sat, visitors silently cleaning or delivering food. Dwalin, his gruff demeanor softened by the redness in his eyes, had knelt in front of Fili and taken his small hand in his, telling him, “Lad, ‘tis no easy thing to commit someone to the stone. I witnessed you then and I witness you now. You do not suffer alone or unseen.”

As he remembered Dwalin’s words, Fili let fresh tears fall and he curled in tighter on himself in the cold prison cell. He understood then what it truly was that Mahal had given them. It was not safety, security, or even a home — he had given them each other. And for Fili it was enough. 

It had always been enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the Fever square for Bad Things Happen Bingo.

The door swung open but the rattling bang of it against the stone never came. Kili didn’t look, bunching himself farther back into the corner of his cell. Having the stone to his back wouldn’t stop them, but it would give him something to brace himself against when they came for him. 

Three times they had come for him and Fili, and three times they had tried to drown him while they made Fili watch. He knew now that he couldn’t stop them, but by Mahal’s hammer if he could break one of their knees with a solid kick it would be worth whatever hell they inflicted.

He curled in on himself, protecting his stomach, and waiting, but Fili quietly stepped into view. 

“ _Naddith?_ Bilbo’s getting us out,” Fili whispered. 

Kili shook his head. The cough that came with the water, and the fever that came with the cough, had been getting worse. His head swam and his vision blurred. Hallucinations were setting in and he wiped at the sweat on his brow. 

“Kili, come on, we have to go. There’s not much time,” the hallucination coaxed.

As it entered the cell, its hand outstretched, Kili tried to stand, to prepare himself for the fight. His heart hammered in his chest and blooded roared in his ears as his knees straightened to their full extension.

The world wobbled, his vision grayed, and then he was falling.

*

Consciousness came back in fits and starts… the bone chilling cold of snow melt seeping into his clothes… a hacking wet cough that dragged him screaming into half consciousness… darkness… ceaseless rolling motion… the ache of fever deep in his bones… the roaring, roaring, roaring of the world outside his dark and cramped prison… but there was always water… always pouring, dripping, seeping into his nose and his mouth… 

*

“Kili! Kili!”

Hands like iron vices gripped his shoulders and he struggled. He always struggled. He couldn’t beat them, but Mahal be damned if they thought he would make it any easier. 

“Stop fighting, lad.”

Fingers pressed against his wrist and the side of his neck. Kili jerked away, a curse dying on his tongue as the words turned into a cough.

“His pulse is strong but irregular. Let’s get him out of these wet clothes.”

More hands grabbed at him, pulling at his pants and shirt. Kili blinked, trying to see in order to better fight, but the bright light around him was blinding and he recoiled. His eyes ached and his head throbbed as the world seemed to spin. But dizzy or not, Kili got an arm free and swung in the direction of one of the sets of hands, his fist connecting with a satisfying crunch. 

“Hold him!”

But another set of hands pinned his arm and soon he was divested of all but his small clothes. The stone under him felt… strange. It was uneven, worn, but not worn smooth through cutting or age. Even more curiously, it lacked the chill of the deep earth. 

“Let him go easy.”

The hands on his legs went first, and he blinked furiously, the world still shifting. Then his arms were free and he tried to brace himself against the stone so he could sit up. A hand, calloused and rough but gentle, settled on his shoulder. 

“Easy does it, lad. Let’s you stay lying down for the time being.”

At the careful insistence of the hand, Kili subsided back onto the stone. As he lay there, the light above him began to resolve into sky, and then trees. All the the while voices around him murmured in hushed tones that Kili couldn’t quite follow.

“Kili, can you hear me?”

Kili turned his head in the direction of the voice. His eyes strained in the bright light and it was hard to focus. A face leaned closer and hair like spun gold ringed the person in light.

“Fili?” he asked and the face nodded, the motion making Kili’s stomach roll and head spin.

“I’m here, _naddith,_ ” Fili answered. 

_I’m here_

Fili hadn’t been able to give Kili anything else — no comfort, no reprieve, no touch — _I’m here_ was all Kili could have. He had taken it gladly. A witness, if nothing else. 

A familiar hand, one Kili knew by touch alone, closed around his. After seeing Fili beaten and chained and bound up in ways that caused pain so deep that Fili’s breath drew shallow and each movement twisted his face into agonized lines, they could finally touch. 

 

“Kili, Kili, it’s okay. I’m here. They can’t get to you here,” Fili said.

Grit covered fingers wiped his cheeks, swiping tears from his skin. Kili gasped at the touch and began to cough. Alone in his cell, when he was cold and wet and despair was all he could feel, the thought of someone touching him for comfort seemed mere fantasy. 

“Sit him up. Come on now,” Oin ordered.

Roughly, someone began to pound Kili’s back in a staccato rhythm that started in the middle of his back and worked its way up. 

“Take little sips of air. Small, shallow breaths until your lungs are full.”

But his lungs felt full already. Still, Kili did his best to comply, gripping Fili like he might vanish if Kili loosened his grip in the slightest. The sipping made his coughing worse and he had to spit repeatedly. They held him up, encouraging Kili’s efforts until he was so winded that went limp and was laid back down. 

“That’s enough now, lad. Just breathe normally. You got a lot of it out of you. It’s a good start.”

Kili nodded and closed his eyes. The stone that held him was still warm and the sun made his skin buzz with heat. He relaxed, secure in his brother’s presence, and slept.

*

Kili rested back against Fili’s chest, exhausted and gasping from another round of breathing exercises and forced coughing. Under the direction of Oin, and with assistance from Fili and Dwalin to stay sitting up, Kili spat up a truly disgusting amount of phlegm until the lack of air made gray spots dance in his vision. 

Fili murmured as he wiped Kili’s brow, something low and unintelligible but soothing against the ache of fever in his bones. Oin’s many tinctures and preparations were long since lost in the depths of Mirkwood and what little they hadn’t lost had been taken by the elves upon their capture. Apparently, some of the local herbs could be used to curative effect and Oin had gathered several bundles, but without any way to prepare it Kili would have to endure the fever unaided. 

While the two princes sat together, the camp moved around them. Still on the run from the elves, the risk of drawing attention to their location through fire was too great, but there were other things to be done — gathering and preparing food, fashioning weapons, and making shelter. 

The evening passed — little snatches of wakefulness here and there as various things drew him back to consciousness. 

“ _Nadad?_ ” Kili whispered. It was long after the rest of the camp had been settled and their whispers had turned to snores.

“I’m here,” Fili answered, his words stronger but sadder than they had been in the dungeon.

“You always have been,” Kili replied.

“Not as I should have been.”

The guilt and self-recrimination in Fili’s voice was like a weight settling over them both, and Kili shook his head as vigorously as he dared. “That’s not true. You did what you could.”

“Did what I could?” Fili exclaimed. He took a deep breath and continued more quietly. “I did what politicians do. I did what we were taught. But I never did what mattered most. I never saved you.”

Kili opened his mouth to argue the point, taking a deep breath to prepare his argument against Fili’s apparent idiocy, and then he started coughing again. It took a few minutes and some drumming on his back before Kili could draw breath without starting yet another fit. When it was done, Kili felt more exhausted than before, but he was resolved not to sleep until Fili had heard what he had to say. 

“Do you think that giving them what they wanted would have stopped them?” Kili asked.

“It would have been better than letting them torture you,” argued Fili.

Kili shook his head, the motion making his eyes throb. “No. If you had agreed, they would have killed Thorin to make you king, to make your word binding. They would have held me for ransom against their demands. And what then? When you were freed to finish the Company’s work without Thorin and without me, what would you do? Even if you had offered them what they wanted, it wouldn’t have made anything better.”

Fili shook his head and swallowed. “I watched them torture you. I just knelt there and watched. You should be mad at me. You should hate me. I could have given away our gold for you and I didn’t.”

“Do you want me to be mad at you?”

Fili choked back a sob. “Yes. No… I never want you to hate me, _naddith_ , but I deserve it.”

Kili grabbed Fili’s hand in his own. “You want me to be honest?”

Fili nodded, his chin lightly bumping against the top of Kili’s head.

“The first time it happened I felt hurt, hurt that you couldn’t give me what I needed, that you were playing the political game. I thought you were putting all that above me. I was- the water, Fili- I don’t, I don’t think I can talk about it, about what they did, and you were there and I kept thinking that you could make it stop. And I was angry, but even more I felt betrayed.”

Kili stopped, his chest aching with the effort of speech. Behind him, where they leaned against the tree, Fili sat still and quiet. His breaths, which had been rough and hitching with his sobs, were suddenly shallow and tight where his chest moved against Kili’s back.

“But when they brought us back to our cells I could hear you cry. And your face when they brought me the second time — the fear and the anger and the pain — you looked like I felt. And I saw, when they marched you past my cell, you could barely walk from what they did. It wasn’t your fault. They hurt you, too. How could I be mad at you for that?”

Fili shifted his hold on Kili so that both arms wrapped around him. Kili could feel where his brother’s tears dripped onto his shoulder. They felt cool against his fever hot skin, his hypothermia from the river long since past. 

“Fili-”

“I witnessed you. I never once looked away or closed my eyes. I watched every single second of what they did to you. I’m sorry I didn’t do more.”

“There wasn’t more to do. You did what you could. Let it be enough,” Kili soothed. 

A breeze rustled the leaves in the trees over their small encampment and Kili shivered violently. His fever had not yet broken and the cool air on his sweat-slick skin made his body tremble, a reminder of the morning’s near-fatal drenching in the river’s icy waters. 

“Easy, _naddith_ ,” murmured Fili. He pulled Bombur’s tunic, which he had lent them for the night, over them like a blanket and rubbed at Kili’s arms to warm him. 

After a few moments the shivering slowed, and then abated altogether. Kili shifted, settling against his brother, and he closed his eyes. It felt good to give up his anger against Fili, to give Fili what he most needed to hear. Their bond was something that the elves could not take from them, no matter how hard they tried. The thought that they were still themselves after everything that had happened was as comforting as the rhythm of Fili’s heart beat against his back.

“Dwalin offered me witness,” Fili said suddenly. Fili’s voice sounded brittle to Kili’s ears — fear edged with the rawness of horror. “I don’t- I don’t think I can.”

“I can’t yet either. But when you’re ready — when we’re both ready — we’ll do it together,” Kili said.

Behind him, Fili nodded. “Of course. Together.”

The light spring wind gusted in the trees. Fili wiped Kili’s forehead again and then dragged his nails over Kili’s scalp, the heat of his fever leaving tingling lines in Fili’s wake. Kili let his eyes close.

“Sleep, _naddith_ ,” Fili whispered.

“Just don’t go anywhere,” Kili murmured.

A breathy chuckle from Fili puffed against the back of Kili’s neck, but he was asleep before he could hear Fili’s reply.

“I’m here, _naddith_. I’m here.”


End file.
